1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an immunological agglutination pattern detection device and more particularly to a blood corpuscle agglutination pattern detection device for determining various kinds of types of blood and detecting an antic body and antigen from agglutination patterns of the blood corpuscles.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Such kind of agglutination pattern detection device has been well known. In a conventional agglutination pattern detection device, use is made of a wine cup-shaped reaction vessel into which are quantitatively injected a floating liquid obtained by centrifuge and containing 2 to 5% of test blood corpuscles and a given antiserum. These floating liquid and antiserum are agitated, kept stationary and then subjected to centrifugal precipitation. Then, the reaction vessel is intensely shaken so as to separate the blood corpuscles from each other and then subjected to relatively slow oscillations to agglutinate the blood corpuscles into a center part of the base surface of the reaction vessel, thereby forming an agglutination pattern. Lights transmitted through the center portion and peripheral portion of the pattern are incident through a center opening and concentric peripheral opening of a diaphragm on first and second light receiving elements, respectively. In this case, the light passing through the peripheral opening is incident through a condenser lens on the second light receiving element.
In such conventional agglutination pattern detection device, if the blood corpuscles are not agglutinated, the amount of light passing through the center portion of the reaction vessel becomes small, whereas the amount of light passing through the peripheral portion of the reaction vessel becomes large. On the contrary, if the blood corpuscles are agglutinated, the light passing through the center portion of the reaction vessel becomes substantially equal to the light passing through the peripheral portion of the reaction vessel, the amount of light being intermediate between the small amount of light passing through the center portion of the reaction vessel and the large amount of light passing through the peripheral portion of the reaction vessel. As a result, it is possible to determine whether or not the blood corpuscles are agglutinated by means of the output signals delivered from the first and second light receiving elements.
The use of the above mentioned conventional agglutination pattern detection device has a number of disadvantages. In the first place, use must be made of two light receiving elements and hence the detection device is complex in construction. Secondly, the output level of these two light receiving elements are required to be adjusted beforehand by means of a reference agglutination pattern, so that the detection device is troublesome in operation. Third, the reference agglutination pattern involved to adjust the output level of the two light receiving elements is not always coincident with the agglutination pattern of a test body used in practice, so that the determination becomes erroneous. Finally, the conventional device for forming the agglutination pattern is required to cause non-agglutination blood corpuscles to float again on the test liquid, and as a result, it is necessary to shake the reaction vessel, thereby making the device troublesome in operation. In addition, if the reaction vessel is shaken, the blood corpuscles, which have once been agglutinated becomes separated. As a result, the above mentioned device is only applicable to the strong agglutination, but could not be applied to the weak agglutination.
In order to determine the presence or absence of the immunological agglutination and measure the degree of such agglutination with regard to the weak agglutination, a device for detecting the agglutination pattern formed on a conical base surface of a reaction vessel by making it stationary has also been proposed. In such conventional device, the agglutination pattern formed on the base surface of the reaction vessel is not always clear and accurate and hence it is impossible to precisely detect the agglutination pattern.